Rejection is a part of writing. (Well, it is unless you don’t try to get your writing published.) However, it’s a part of writing that a lot of us don’t talk about with each other. It can be humiliating, demoralizing and sad. Or it can be funny.

On Literary Rejections on Display, one writer shared some (surely modified) excerpts from rejections he received for his novels. Some of my favorites:

we think there are too many “fucks” in this book

we are tired of publishing books about the Holocaust

we are looking for books that teach people how to improve their lives

we think your book would make the readers suffer

we think your book needs a happy ending

we think nobody gives a shit about the lives of farmers in Southern France

-marcia